Haunted Mirror

I just started writing this one, though it's been simmering a while--not sure if it's going to be a novel or what yet. The pacing seems to be leaning in that direction. It's on the romantic UF side of things, I'm hoping with a more humorous cast (chick-lit? like Enchanted, Inc) not really gritty.

Tell me, whaddaya think of this opening to The Mortal Queen:

Michelle had gone to the Napoleon Dynamite spectrum of cute lately—glasses and short curls—which looked so right I almost didn't notice even when she had on her dyed-my-hair expression.

“My-chelle,” I said, “hair's so cute, especially with the eyewear. Are you really wearing glasses now?”

“Don't be a stupid-face, Tara.” She slid into the caf chair with her own special shimmy. “They're just frames, I have to wear contacts, or I'm blind.”

 

Thank you! What have you got cooking up?

The last two lines from yesterday: "A couple of Norse spelunkers, the candles tied in their beards smoking, manhandle the ostrich out, and leap after it. An aristocratic woman with bruises on her cheek and a missing earring stabs a fat man wearing gold rings in the throat with a curved dagger."

I didn't sleep well last night, caught in a couple of strange dreams (the persistent trickery of the mouse who has invaded our pantry distracting me, as well as the solid impression that we had a minor earthquake last night or the 1.00AM train was especially heavy), and finally realized what was wrong with the ghost train sequence in PSYCHOBABEL. I need to cut most of it, unfortunately, but there may be a few lines that can be saved. Maybe the one about the Norsemen.

Hello, I'm Wordkraphter, Rose, whatever. 

I'm a writer of such in that I've secretly been a writer since I was nine, but no one's pubished me yet. Except for a few letters and such.

I'm not trying to get published at the moment, but I hope to at some point.

I write mainly urban fantasy, or any sort of fantasy/scifi/horror. I also tend to write dramatic monologues, some short fiction and bad poetry. :P

I am currently trying to get my hands on The Chosen One by D L Mains, back in the days of reading Harry Potter fanfiction she wrote my favourite and now she's published. I'm also trying to get hold of a decent copy of King Lear which I want to read, or Midsummer Night's Dream whichever comes first. I guess that's a lot about what I want to read and no what I am reading. Currently I've just started Othello, but with my AS exams this week I'm not getting far.

Oh, my favourite Urban Fantasy author is probably someone quite typical like Cassandra Clare, Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy over Succubus Blues) or maybe Blood and Chocolate I'm not sure.

My favourite character is probably Buffy or Max from Dark Angel (yeah they're not books, but they're still urban fantasy, or sci fi in the case of Dark Angel).

I used to write Harry Potter fanfiction. Now I just read it.

Looking forward to reading and getting to know you.

-Rose

Another One Bites the Dust - Jennifer Rardin "Ever experience blackouts, and regain consciousness to find yourself holding a gun to your own head? This makes for fascinating reading..."

Have a lovely day! :-)

Tez Miller

Let's talk a little bit about how to format a manuscript before sending it in.

Now, every time I go through this song and dance, someone pops up and declares that Good Gad, he has done it the other way and nobody ever told him different. And his editor does not mind manuscripts set in Garamond.   Or that I need to move into the digital age.  To which I reply, "It's your song and dance." It's called Standard Manuscript Format for a reason, but it is entirely up to you whether you do or don't adopt it.   SMF Police isn't going to come and get you.  :P

Another point that is often made: well, it is all electronic anyway, so what does it matter?  Not true.  Most houses will expect the delivery of both hard copy and the electronic file.  Your Editor and CE will be working with your hard copy.  Why make things harder for them?

Also, some publishing houses do not use SMF.  So a good rule of thumb is, use SMF unless you see instructions to the contrary.

I don't work in SMF. I hate Courier with a passion, so I write out all of my stuff and then format it.

1. Header:

Make sure your header includes your name, the title, or abbreviated title, and a page number in the top left corner.   Manuscripts occasionally fall or get scattered and you will save editors and agents a lot of grief if you clearly identify each page.

2.  Font.

Set your manuscript into Courier or Courier New, 10 or 12 pt.  Courier is a monospace font. 

If you study it for a second, you will notice it looks like a typewriter font, because every letter takes exactly the same amount of space.

 It's not the prettiest font out there.  That's why converting manuscript into Courier is the very last step on my manuscript preparation list.   So if it's so damn ugly, why do we even use it?  Two reasons.  The first  goes back to typographical word count.  Typographical word is 5 characters plus a space.

Type: 1234567890 6 times on the first line.  Adjust the margins until the next character typed will jump onto the second line.  Depending on the version of Word, your margins might run anywhere from  from 1 inch to 1.4 inch.   Now you have exactly 60 characters per line or exactly 10 monospaced typographic words per line.  Now let's do a new Word Count, except this time we will count the lines and add a zero on the end.

100 lines - 1,000 monospaced typographical words. 

Did your word count just jumped?  I bet it did.  When I realized how much I had to cut from my first manuscript, I very cleverly asked my editor if that was SMF format word count or Ms Word word count.  I was told without any qualms that it was SMF.  :(

Typically an average novel that is 90,000 words in SMF will run about 70K plus change in MS  Word.

OMG, I just realized that my novel is  much longer in SMF and aaaaaah, what do I do?

The answer is: nothing.  If your novel is good, and you submit it, and the publisher accepts it, they will instruct you to cut it if it's too long. 

3.  Spacing.

Make sure your manuscript is double spaced throughout.

And now we come to the second reason for using Courier.

Picture yourself going through the manuscript with a blue pen, trying to find any inconsistencies, correct spelling, and occasionally make notes in the margins. Which one would you prefer?

1)  Sample one

She wanted to kiss him.  He offered her a chance to kiss him free of guilt, without admitting that she dreamed of his golden body and his green eyes and his voice saying her name.   She wouldn't get another opportunity like that.  Rose willed herself to take a small step forward.  He kept his hands on the table.  So far once Declan gave his word, he kept it.

          Suddenly bold, she closed the distance between them and rested her own palms on the table between his hands and his sides.  If he brought his arms in, he could clamp her.  It should've made her more cautious, but instead she simply trembled.  She felt like she was walking on a tight rope or running along the edge of one of Declan's blades.  One misstep and she would fatally cut herself or fall into abyss.

1)  Sample 2

She wanted to kiss him.  He offered her a chance to kiss him free of guilt, without admitting that she dreamed of his golden body and his green eyes and his voice saying her name.   She wouldn't get another opportunity like that.  Rose willed herself to take a small step forward.  He kept his hands on the table.  So far once Declan gave his word, he kept it.

     Suddenly bold, she closed the distance between them and rested her own palms on the table between his hands and his sides.  If he brought his arms in, he could clamp her.  It should've made her more cautious, but instead she simply trembled.  She felt like she was walking on a tight rope or running along the edge of one of Declan's blades.  One misstep and she would fatally cut herself or fall into abyss.

Be nice to your Copy Editor.  CEs work very hard.  Give them large font and plenty of space.

4.  First Page.

There is some variation on this.  But whatever you do, make sure your address and contact information is available on the first page.  I stick mine in the top left corner.   Then under it I center a title.  And then I start text.

But what if I just want to have my title on a separate page?

I would say it's a waste of space, but this falls into personal preference arena.

5.  Last Page.

Make sure you typed END at the end of your manuscript.  Otherwise you will get an email like this:

"Dear Ilona,

I have reached the last page of the manuscript and your novel stops but there is no END.  It feels like the end, but I thought I would check with you to see if we were missing any pages."

6.  My editor stated that she prefers all her submissions in __________ font with ______ spacing.

DO WHAT YOUR EDITOR TELLS YOU.

Direct Editorial instruction trumps everything.  So if your editor tells you she wants your manuscript in Lucinda Calligraphy, you DO IT.  You do not argue, you do exactly what the editor says.  In the cases where the editor requested a font that is not monospaced, such as Times New Roman, make sure you specify that you're doing MS Word count, since you have no choice in that case.

And just as an icing on the cake, I bring you this link from lovely Deanna Hoak, who is what I would call one of the absolute best CEs out there:  Read More

Over the past couple of weeks I've been forced to confront the major flaw in my gap year plans. It's that I didn't actually plan anything for the month after Paris. I believe I might have actually forgotten that the month of May exists. This is worrying enough in itself, but there is worse to come.

I gave up after a few days of making the effort to go out and traipse and decided (in a very uncharacertistic way, I'm sure you'll agree), to spend some quality time with the internet.

It can be a dark and terrifying world, online. It sucks you in slowly. First you find the site which will stream episodes of 'How I met your mother' online for you for free. It seems harmless enough, so you watch one, maybe two episodes. You realise that you don't even like the programme, but you find yourself watching more and more anyway, unable to stop.

The next thing you know, it's two in the morning and you're watching gag reels on youtube.

( Read more... )

The hideousness of the death toll in Myanmar and China currently just boggles me. It is horrific and terrifying, and I'm sort of at a loss for words about the whole thing. Not that there's anything I can say about it, other than--if you have a few extra dollars, it wouldn't be a bad week to chip in to Doctors Without Borders.

---

and in the department of things-that-are-shatteringly-trivial-by-comparison, but-life-must-go-on:

Another bad climbing night yesterday. I managed two 5.7s I'd done before (One of them is overhung and I spend the whole damned time dogging on the rope, but I get there.), but my left big toe has been giving me trouble, and the damned thing started to hurt so badly after two routes that I bailed on the third one about ten feet up. Also, the left shoulder is not giving me the love, and my ankle is a little sore, I think from favoring the toe.

Blah. I really want to go for a run this morning, as it's still cool and pretty out there. But the smart thing is to stay home and give my foot and ankle a break. Blah!

I think I need to step up project less-of-me, because it would not hurt my joints to get an extra forty or sixty pounds off them before I expect them to manage this stuff I'm throwing at them. There's some sort of delicate balance between exercise, joint pain, serotonin reuptake, caloric intake, and how much owie I can reasonably expect my body to absorb with in the process of trying to keep it healthy that I need to strike here.

Hmm. I wonder how stupid it really would be, to go for a run. Screw it, we'll give it a try, and if it hurts too much, we'll stop.

From "The Greatest Ever Vegetarian Cookbook", Editor: Nicola Graimes,

Fennel, Orange and Arugula Salad

( recipe behind the cut )

Very tasty. And it helps that we're using tangelo/tangerines, upon which I am completely hooked.

No picture could do its tastiness justice, so I won't try. There is a variant at the Colavita site, which contains a poor picture.

They're here! They're here!

They've been here for a few hours, sorry to those of you that were waiting with baited breath. They left SLC at 6:30 this morning, got here at 3:30. They made excellent time, especially since they stopped in Moab and took all the horses for a little walk. JM called me this morning after they'd left to say she'd be happy to live in the trailer they have and I agree. Nice, new and safe. Oh, and Flani the nervous traveler showed up dry, not dripping in sweat and didn't look like he had sweat at all. I am so pleased with that company and will be writing them awesome feedback on uship.

I don't have any good pictures yet. They're both filthy and not presentable. One of the first things they both did was roll and eat every shoot of grass in the corrals. Rhapsy settled right in since she's well traveled. Flani... he definitely wasn't as settled as her, but he wasn't freaked out by any means.

The wind really picked up and clouds rolled in not long after they got here. I found Rhapsy standing with her nose into the wind, eyes half closed, ears floppy and a look of utter contentment on her face. She and Flani are both outside horses that have been living inside. I could totally tell that they're both so happy out there, which makes me very happy.

So tired.

Post regarding weekend coming later.

Catching up on lj tomorrow.

For now, rest.

*thud*

Mamet's mixed martial arts movie.  (Try that one ten times fast.)  The longest ninety minute flick that I have ever seen.

Not, I should say, in precisely a bad way!  I liked a lot of it (the first three-quarters, and the [albeit inexplicable] very end) (there are, unfortunately, about fifteen minutes of pure stupid right in front of the climax).  It's rather striking, in a stylized, simultaneously understated and overblown, kind of way.

But yeah, a dense piece of work.

Moon Called
Writer: Patricia Briggs
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 288

Took a break from my writer's block/procrastination books to curl up with an urban fantasy. Patricia Briggs's Moon Called had been highly recommended to me, and since I have a fetish for werewolves, I couldn't help but check it out. It's a good book. Fast, super-smooth read, and even though werewolves are beyond common in urban fantasy these days, I was pleased to see that Briggs's weres differed greatly (aside from the pack dynamics that dominate nearly EVERY werewolf book I've read) from Vaughn's and Armstrong's.

The main character, Mercy Thompson, isn't a werewolf. She's a walker (derived from skinwalker) and can shape-shift into coyote form. She's one of the last of her kind and she doesn't know what it means to be a walker and why she's seen as such a threat to the rest of the supernatural community. But she also doesn't care. She minds her own business until a newly-Changed werewolf comes to her shop for help, and by helping him, she finds herself in the middle of something much, much bigger.

And did I mention that Mercy's an auto-mechanic? Because she is, and that's beyond awesome.

Also note that there's .01% of paranormal romance in this book. The tale focuses on Mercy and her friends, and obviously, the plot itself and the mystery. Like I said, it's a good read.

The full review is in my LJ if anyone's interested. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.

REVIEW: Patricia Briggs's MOON CALLED

Happy Reading!

Hi, sorry for the intrusion. I submitted a piece of creative fiction to Weird Tales 5(ish) weeks ago now, and haven't heard anything back. Their submission guidelines state 2-4 weeks.

This is my first time submitting work. Is it proper to wait 'x' number of weeks before submitting it elsewhere? Is it proper to wait a few weeks longer and request an update?

All advice and experience welcome, and thank you.

79. The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner.
80. Motor mouth, by Janet Evanovich.
81. Cyrano, by Geraldine McCaughrean.
82. Only human, by Tom Holt. Might have enjoyed this if I had never read any Terry Pratchett. Pales in comparison.
83. Instead of three wishes, by Megan Whalen Turner.

Nearly 2K on the Even Side of PSYCHOBABEL. We call this "truckin' along!" Only, er, A LOT to go. I've been spending a lot of time wrestling with the basic format, and have finally opted to move forward. I think the Odd Side will fall together naturally once there is Even Side material to play off. I think. As you can imagine, it hasn't been like sitting in the living room, sucking down bon-bons while catching up on LOST. This whole idea of linear hypertext is a bit tricky. I've been looking at number of books for inspiration and examples of things to avoid: Danielewski's House of Leaves, of course; Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and The Castle of Crossed Destinies; a number of things from the Dalkey Archive Press; Siegel's Love in a Dead Language; Wallace's Infinite Jest; Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

Anything else? Drop 'em in the comments. Things that rely on footnotes only as a means of fucking with the audience barely count, but note 'em anyway. I'm a curious sort of procrastinator.

We went to IHOP yesterday to celebrate Mother's Day breakfast. Solomon had "Cherry pink!" and I've co-opted it already to something much more sinister than a smiley face pancake with bananas and strawberry yogurt. This will come back to bite me in a decade when he can't sleep because he's read this book and "Cherry pink!" is haunting him, but what else is a dad to do with a running fount of surrealist imagery? Just ignore it?

The first book in Shelley Adina's series: It's All About Us. Visit her website for an interactive community based on the books.

Tall, blonde Lissa Mansfield is used to being one of the "in" crowd--but being accepted by the popular girls at posh Spencer Academy boarding school in San Francisco is turning out to be harder than she thought. And then there's her New-York-loudmouth roommate, Gillian Chang, who's not just happy to be a Christian herself--she's determined to out Lissa, too! If Lissa can just keep her faith under wraps long enough to hook Callum McCloud, the hottest guy in school, she'll be golden.

But when Callum pressures her to go all the way with him, Lissa has to decide for herself how far is too far. How can she see that line when he's so gorgeous and popular and she's so dazzled? And besides, she's too busy shopping for a Valentino and booking the hottest celeb for the Benefactors Ball. Who knew finding a place at Spencer Academy would be so complicated?

***

All About Us #2: The Fruit of My Lipstick (August, 2008)
All About Us #3: Be Strong & Curvaceous (January, 2009)

First things first:

The winner of the funny title contest is brigidsblest with a magnificent title of Magic Blows. Please email me at ilona at ilonaland with your address and preferences for who you would like me to sign the book to.

Now regarding the signing. I consider it a resounding success. We didn't sell a ton of books, but we met several awesome people, one of whom was Horace, who is going right into Walmart book somewhere and the other two were Ericka and Amanda, who very graciously hung out with us the whole time. (They were incredibly kind for putting up with me for that long.)

Hey, all!

Maggie Stiefvater, Brenna Yovanoff, and myself just opened up our writing blog, merry_fates, and we'd love for you to check us out. We'll each be offering original fiction every week (starting today with Brenna!). In addition we'll discuss the craft of writing, authors we love and who have influenced us, research, and all kinds of fun stuff. The current schedule is available on the userinfo page.

We will frequently write from a common prompt, and we'd like any of our readers to participate in both the discussions AND the flash fiction.

The community isn't specifically themed urban fantasy, but all three of us write in the genre, and undoubtedly many of the posts and short fiction will reflect that.

Cheers,
Tessa Gratton